Peggy Sue Got Married

Just watched this, what a weirdly sweet movie!
Loved the score. The first 15 minutes felt like a horror film. Then again, the idea of a high school reunion is something I find terrifying.

Jonathan Demme and Debra Winger were attached to the project at one point in time, I think.

I loved this movie. I want to see it again.

I can't imagine Debra Winger at all, Turner was perfection.
I normally can't stand Nicholas Cage as an actor, but having seen this and Moonstruck quite recently I get the appeal. It's his later action schtick that I can't buy.

Penny Marshall was set to direct with Winger, started three weeks of pre-production and was fired. It would have been her first movie, the studio didn't think she could handle it since she had only directed TV up till then.

She would've done a great job. I think Penny is underrated as a director. Her movies all hold up and have a sweetness that's not schlocky.

"Well, Mr Snelgrove, I happen to know that in the future I will not have the slightest use for algebra, and I speak from experience. "

Nicolas Coppola eer I mean Cage, gives one of the worst performances in a major motion picture. Of course Uncle Fancis hired him and would never fire him even though everyone including Kathleen Turner wanted him to.

Kathleen Turner was wonderful in this. The scene that always chokes me up every time I see it is when Peggy Sue answers the phone and speaks to her grandmother, who in the future is long-dead. Turner was so good conveying emotion there.

I also love this movie. John Williams score makes me cry every time!

Actually it was composed by John Barry, who was the perfect choice for a movie like this. Coppola used him again a couple of years later on Cotton Club.

Is Coppola's One from the Heart worth watching? It sounds truly strange.

That's right - it was Barry

Yes, when Peggy goes to visit her grandparents, I cry every time.

me

[quote]Is Coppola's One from the Heart worth watching? It sounds truly strange.
It's OK but watch for the technical side. The whole film was shot inside a studio, including the outdoor Vegas scenes. Coppola directed it inside a trailer off the set and was the first to hook a camera up to the camera so they could watch the scene instantly. Saw it with a sold out crowd at Radio City Music Hall preview.

I love this movie. Kathleen should have won the Oscar.

"Peggy Sue GOT married - case closed!"

It's a strange little movie - not helped in the least by Cage's utterly bizarre performance - but full of wonderful little touches that only became more poignant for me and made more sense as the years have gone by. I get it now in a way I simply couldn't back when it was released.

"Mom, I forgot you were ever this young."

Kathleen in this scene makes me cry every time

Watch for the moment when Cage is dancing with Kathleen, moves in to kiss her -- and then improvises a bizarre belch right in her face. She can't hide her contempt, ha, and you know she went screaming for the director soon as he cut.
But I thought Cage was a true original back then, took risks. That voice... and watch when it goes up like a duck in the big fight scene. "I'm thinking to myself DID WE BREAK UP?" He has to clear his throat to get it back on par.
Loved this movie, flaws and all (half the script was cut out up front so no payoff for girl in wheelchair, mom selling her jewelry, etc.) Saw it at Cinerama Dome with packed house -- loved Kathleen then, loved the '80s.

Peggy Sue Got Married was good, but I love Guarding Tess with Cage and Shirley McLaine

1971,1981, 1991, 2001, 2011,

I too hated Cage in this. Thought he was the worst thing about the movie, which I otherwise enjoyed. I just wish they had cast someone different. That nasally voice... ugh!

Me too, r23. I've never liked Cage in anything - one of the most egregious cases of Hollywood nepotism ever - another actor in the role would have been much better.
That said, it was still a fun movie.

One of my top three all-time favorites and I loved Cage's performance. Probably my favorite, followed by his turn in Moonstruck.

I love Catherine Hicks, but she was too old to play the daughter.

Catherine Hicks was her best friend, Helen Hunt was the daughter. One of Barbara Harris' last performances.

R27 - oh shit you're right. It's been too long since I've seen the movie.

Jim Carey is in this as well.
I love the part when Peggy Sue tries to get Nic's band to try and sing "She Loves You." Nic likes the song, but wants to change the word "yeah" to "ooh"
"She loves you ooh, ooh ooh!"

Imgonnagotohamburg%26discoverthebeatles

The best part was seeing ethnic Sophia Coppola in the WASP family. It was a total mystery until I read the credits.

In her autobiography, Kathleen Turner said that Nicholas Cage was a nightmare and years later, apologized to her for how he'd behaved on this film.

Well, Mr Snelgrove, I happen to know that in the future I will not have the slightest use for algebra, and I speak from experience.

AHHHHH you can stream it...I'm going to watch it during lunch.

spoiler ahead
Love this film except for the cop out ending in which she goes back to her cheating husband just because of the kids.

Sophia Coppola was awful then and her father STILL put her in Godfather 3.

"I thought chicks like you traveled in packs."
- Michael Fitzsimmons.

Della

Sofia Coppola as Kathleen Turner's little sister strained credibility.
I like Turner in this, she is very good, but I think Winger would've been just as good, if not better.

r19 made me cry. I love that scene so much.

One of the best parts of the movie is watching Peggy Sue react, as an adult, to teenage insults. LOL "OK have a nice day."

I also love the scene that R19 mentioned. Another favorite is the one where she's about to pour herself a drink, stops herself, and then decides to have the drink after all because, "oh what the hell, I'm already dead anyway".

I thought the ending was good. She wasn't changing the past but she was getting a chance to reconsider some things. I would say he only flaw is that their marriage breaking down isn't fleshed out beyond the fact that he cheated and he didn't succeed in having a singing career.
The grandfather being in a time travel lodge was fucked up. But then again, she wasn't EXACTLY time travelling, was she? I like the little hint with the guy dedicating a book to her.

Kathleen Turner was really believable as a teenager, even though she was over 30.
Nicholas Cage was so fucking ugly, and that weird nasal voice he affected was distracting.

The scene where she picks up the phone and hears her grandmother's voice on the other line kills me every single damned time.

r20, why does the mom selling her jewelry need a payoff? Peggy Sue's mom is aghast when her husband brings the new Edsel home; you can hear her telling him they can't afford it and begging him to return it. Peggy Sue says her father was "always doing things like that."
What choice does the mother have to cover bills except selling her jewelry? Particularly since her husband's business is a hat shop in 1960, the exact moment when in history when President Kennedy started a hatless trend that killed the industry.

"You know what a penis is, Peggy Sue. Stay away from it!"
Such a flawed movie, nearly ruined by Cage's terrible performance. But I do like it and watch it at least once a year.

You bought an Edsel!

Ed%20Sel

R44, I'm just saying I read the original script and MANY plot points were cut -- adding to Peggy Sue's helpless feeling that she couldn't change anything even with what she knew. The dad's finances (part of Moms selling jewelry) were more spelled out in trouble and he wouldn't listen to her biz savvy so she couldn't help, the friend in the wheelchair was a gymnast who hurt herself on a certain day and Peggy Sue couldn't stop that from happening again, etc.
The opening scene where she is at the mirror (really across from a body double) is actually page 10 or so in the script, a lot of backstory of her at the bakery she owns, more with Cage divorce, THE SON that is missing in the final film save for being in her charm necklace. The writers got blame for some plot holes but they had covered them all until Copolla chopped a lot out, probably just for length. All just FYI a a fan of the film, flaws and all.

30 year-old Joan Allen looked 45 at the reunion, and 45 as a teenager.

Look at a 50s year book. A lot of the women looked like middle aged women. That's how Turner and Allen manage to seem fitting.
People I knew who came of age during the era of the film identified with the excessive promise attached to marriage at the time. For them, having that at the heart of the film overrode flaws in the film. There also were nice touches like using period phrases and terms like "wang" (who calls their cock that anymore).
I thought it had a lot of flaws when it was released, but it grew on me when I saw it on cable. Telling off the algebra teacher and the mean girl are classic and the scenes with the Edsel and the mother's crack/question about knowing "what a penis is" are classics.
The film was made for a relatively low budget after a string of box office failures for Coppola. I suspect that was part of the nepotism, not to mention the inclusion of people like Carrey in early roles and Harris in one of her last.

I was so disappointed that Peggy Sue didn't follow her plan to go to Liverpool and discover the Beatles. That's where I'd go if I found myself thrown back in time to 1960!

If Peggy Sue does indeed go back to the past and return to the present later, does her geek friend from school remember this journey later too? Isn't he the only person other than her grandparents who knows that Peggy Sue had returned to the past from the 1980s?

Kathleen Turner ripped Nicolas Cage in her autobiography:
"Nicolas Cage, the male lead, has apologized to me for years for his behavior during the filming of Peggy Sue. But I must say that I have not pursued working with hi again because of that experience.
Look, he's Coppola's nephew. Coppola truly believed he could do it. The problem was that once Nicolas got the role, he wanted to prove that he wasn’t there as the result of nepotism. And so everything Francis wanted him to do, he went against – just to show he wasn’t under Francis’s wing which was ridiculous, because Francis’s instincts and direction were excellent. But Nicolas had to do the opposite to everything: that stupid voice and the fake teeth – oh, honestly. I cringe to think of it.
He caused so many problems. He’d been arrested twice, for drunk driving and I think once for stealing a dog. He came across a Chihuahua he liked and stuck it in his jacket. He came into my trailer the last night when we were in the midst of shooting literally for twenty-two and a half hours in a row so that we could finish in the time required. He’d finished all his filming and he’d’ been drinking heavily. He fell on his knees and he asked if I could ever forgive him. And I said, “not right now. I have a scene to shoot. Excuse me.” I just walked out of the trailer. He didn’t manage to kill the film but he didn’t add a lot to it, ether. For years, whenever I saw Nic he would apologize again. I’d say, “Look,
I’m way over it. It’s okay now.” But he obviously had a sense that he could have done better.

I like Cage in this, Raising Arizona, Moonstruck, and Wild at Heart. He was a very electric presence and compared to nothings like Zac Effron and Tatum Channing he looks like Olivier.

I've owned this DVD for years and watch it fairly often. Nick Cage is annoying and I didn't like him until Moonstruck. I think my favorite movie of his is The Family Man.